The ‘Theological Nihilism’ of Friedrich Gogarten. On a Context in Karl Löwith’s Critique of Carl Schmitt

Abstract

This essay discusses the philosopher Karl Löwith’s critique of the jurist Carl Schmitt and the theologian Friedrich Gogarten. My aim is twofold: first, I want to reconstruct Löwith’s thesis in his 1935 article on Schmitt’s ‘occasional decisionism’ (updated to include a critique of Gogarten in 1960), together with a reading of some central texts by Schmitt and Gogarten; second, I want to raise some critical points regarding Löwith’s claims through these readings. While I agree with Löwith that aspects of Schmitt’s and Gogarten’s thought helped hastening the nihilistic tendencies they themselves claimed to counter, I believe that his diagnosis of their decisionism as nihilism misses important nuances in their work, nuances crucial to the problematization, historicization and philosophical analysis of nihilism. Ultimately, I find that the main point of contestation between Löwith and Schmitt/Gogarten is not whether the latter two affirm modern meaninglessness, but rather whether history can and should be invested with meaning in the first place.